OPERATOR PROFILE // CLEARANCE: PUBLIC
Paul Halton
Platform & Solutions Architect · Engineering Leader
25+ years designing, building and running platforms that handle massive scale, stay secure and keep serving when things go wrong. Technologist since the VIC-20. Still mesmerised.
What I do
I'm a platform and solutions architect who also leads the teams that build and run what gets designed. I've architected systems end to end, from the data layer and traffic routing to the internal platforms engineers ship on, and taken them into production at massive scale.
Before my current role I was Director of Platform Engineering at Rithum (CommerceHub / ChannelAdvisor), where I owned the architecture and operation of large-scale commerce platforms across AWS, Azure and hybrid estates, and led teams spanning AI Platforms, Platform Software Services, DevEx, SRE, FinOps, Auth, Transfer Services, Infrastructure and Networking.
Track record
- Platform and solutions architect at enterprise scale: owned standards, design decisions and cross-team technical direction across hybrid cloud, platform services and AI infrastructure.
- AI and agentic platforms: built MCP services, agent runtime, LLM scaling and AI observability foundations for safe, governed AI adoption.
- Cloud financial governance: owned AWS and Azure budget governance and delivered multi-million-dollar cost optimisation without slowing engineering down.
- AI FinOps: analyse and optimise LLM token spend so AI workloads meet their ROI requirements, measuring cost per outcome, not just cost per call.
- Reliability: established SLO frameworks and incident response standards; built an on-call culture that reduced MTTR.
- Regulated environments: ran infrastructure for critical banking systems where availability and compliance weren't optional.
How I build
- Built for scale. Architectures proven under real production load, designed to grow without re-engineering.
- Secure by design. Least privilege, zero-trust defaults and policy as code, built in from the start instead of bolted on.
- Resilient by default. Regionless HA/DR, automated failover and recovery that has actually been tested.
- Cost-aware. FinOps discipline across cloud and AI: infrastructure, resilience and token spend all answer to ROI.
- Built for the people using it. Developer experience and golden paths that teams choose to use.
What I write about
- Platform and solutions architecture
- Security, cloud governance and FinOps, including AI token economics
- Regionless high availability and disaster recovery
- AI platform strategy, including MCP and governed agent tooling
Based in Co. Kerry, Ireland. Opinions are my own. Connect on LinkedIn ▸